Abstract
Introduction: Patients undergoing total pancreatectomy surgery require intravenous insulin for many days post-surgery, which involves one to two hourly capillary blood glucose monitoring to adjust the amounts of IV insulin. This results in patients regularly complaining of pain and disturbance owing to the constant finger pricking. In the contemporary nursing shortage predicament, this constant need for monitoring also becomes an issue for nursing staff, due to the frequency and length of time this vital sign takes to complete (4.7 minutes) per hour which includes adjustment of insulin (Aragon, 2006). Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) without the need for constant finger pricking has been in use in the health sector, however, is often restricted to ambulatory settings. CGM was piloted in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) setting. The research reported on in this project explored ICU nurses' perspectives of using GCM to investigate its potential to improve patient care, and its transferability outside of the critical care environment.
Methods: A qualitative descriptive study was undertaken in which semi structured interviews with ICU nurses who had (no experience of using CGM) volunteered to participate. The interviews were recorded, and the transcriptions were thematically analysed.
Results: The results show agreement amongst nurses that CGM technology would reduce nursing time spent on the task and remove the necessity of frequent painful monitoring for patients, thereby improving patient care in both the critical care and ward setting.
Discussion: This research showed there was a clear indication of the potential benefit, viability and value of this technology in the ICU and ward setting. The issue of cost of introducing this technology and the potential change of insulin algorithms could be topics for further research.
Conclusion: CGM technology would appear to have not been widely used in the New Zealand inpatient setting. This research has shown, from a nursing perspective, CGM would be both welcome and increase the quality of care in critical care and ward settings in New Zealand hospitals.